[...]... American national identity, and its ideal citizen- subject The spy was both the ultimate “freeman” and a symbol of the wrenching anonymity of life as a corporatized postwar American “organization man.” The figure of the spy is an index of profound transformations in American television in particular, and popular culture more generally, in the first two decades of the Cold War Though the glamorous programs... widely culturally intelligible and seem as natural and self-evident, while others recede into epistemological obscurity.”38 Introduction xxxv Given the transformations within American culture during the Cold War, espionage shows provide a rich opportunity to explore television s participation in the formation of a national culture This book situates the spy programs of the s and s as part of the... protagonists, and the relationship between individuals and institutions This is not to say that the figure of the spy was stripped of its ideological pull as an ideal national citizen In I Spy (NBC, –), this ideal is reinvigorated by a turn toward cultural relevance, diffracting spy programs’ interrogation of agency onto ongoing cultural debates over African American citizenship and civic responsibility... remarkable transformations in the U.S television industry, American popular culture, and narratives of national identity in the late s and early s Chapter  addresses how parodic espionage narratives turned inward on their own discourses of national authority amid a cultural climate responsive to self-referentiality and satire The programs discussed in chapters  and  aired largely simultaneously... alongside consumption, class privilege, and global mobility The shifts in these shows’ representations of American national identity were closely tied to the changing political, cultural, and ideological landscape of the Cold War Popularized by journalist Walter Lippman’s  book of the same title, the term Cold War has since become a kind of structuring shorthand, an endlessly expansive phrase that... Communists and sympathizers, or “fellow travelers.” Among the first friendly witnesses were studio chiefs Jack Warner and Walt Disney, Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan, novelist Ayn Rand, and actor Gary Cooper Based upon their testimony and that of others, the Committee questioned dozens of suspected Communists The Committee’s scrutiny was particularly directed toward writers and the Screen... onto television through various circuitous means.23 Still, though, the ideological containment of the early Cold War was matched by a relatively young television industry, weakened by the blacklist, and in which the centralization of network power contributed to a relatively narrow range of cultural discourses What is fascinating about the shifts in American culture in general and in narrative television. .. available, and part a xii Preface matter of what historical traces opened up fruitful lines of inquiry about TV’s place within American popular culture This book explores the continuities between television espionage programs and both official and popular discourses of national identity In some cases the connections between TV’s fictional representations and state institutions were overt and intentional... expertise and video collection, Toby Miller offered important insights about the manuscript, and series editor Justin Wyatt read multiple drafts and offered invaluable constructive criticism along the way Much of this work was presented at the annual conferences of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and Console-ing Passions, where I benefited from comments and ongoing conversation My colleagues and. .. to say that history is arbitrary, but a host of assumptions—in the case of this book, about the development of the television industry, its place within a national and/ or global culture, its relationships to other media artifacts and practices, and so on—lead toward certain kinds of facts and away from others Furthermore, it is not only the historian’s narrative frameworks that shape this process; unspoken . Experiment Jeff Land Citizen Spy Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture Michael Kackman Commerce and Mass Culture Series University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London An earlier version of chapter. alt="" Citizen Spy C OMMERCE AND M ASS C ULTURE S ERIES Justin Wyatt, Editor Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture Michael Kackman Hollywood Outsiders: The Adaptation of the. Data Kackman, Michael. Citizen spy : television, espionage, and cold war culture / Michael Kackman. p. cm. — (Commerce and mass culture series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-3828-4